Shonky poll serves to demonise Israelis as pro-apartheid

ON October 23, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a front-page story under the headline "Most Israelis support apartheid regime in the country", based on a clearly politicised push poll.

Once the poll findings were properly analysed and the flawed methodology and highly manipulative questions were revealed, Haaretz apologised, printed a retraction and admitted that its headline was misleading and the "apartheid" slur was misplaced. But the damage had been done. The original article was front-page news but the retraction was tucked away on page 5.

Gideon Levy, the journalist who "broke" the story (and was forced to write the retraction), has now admitted making "mistakes" that "shouldn't have happened", dubiously citing "neglect due to time pressures".

While Haaretz's admissions won't be noticed outside Israel, the original story was quickly picked up around the world. Britain's The Guardian and The Independent, Toronto's The Globe and Mail and The Sydney Morning Herald all ran the story under headlines as misleading as that of the original Haaretz piece: "Many Israelis support apartheid-style state, poll suggests" and "The new Israeli apartheid".

1. Needs Repeating...

'Gideon Levy, the journalist who "broke" the story (and was forced to write the retraction), has now admitted making "mistakes" that "shouldn't have happened", dubiously citing "neglect due to time pressures". '
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2. Will Inquiry Follow Ha'aretz 'Apartheid' Clarification?

One day after Ha'aretz's clarification, Gideon Levy himself publishes a column in which he apologizes for his earlier report in which he falsely claimed that the majority of Israeli Jews support apartheid in Israel. Not only is his apology incomplete, but it also reveals that he really has no clue why his original "apartheid" report generated such an outcry.

5. The poll was a lie,

8. FYI

Hitler,” Gandhi solemnly affirmed, “killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. I believe in hara-kiri. I do not believe in its militaristic connotations, but it is a heroic method.”

“You think,” I said, “that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?”

“Yes,” Gandhi agreed,” that would have been heroism. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to the evils of Hitler’s violence, especially in 1938, before the war. As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

I can only speak for myself but I could not care less what Gandhi has to say about anything.

As far as your assertions, there is no aparthied in Israel everyone has equal rights though there is some discrimination just like anywhere else. Jews are indigenous to the middle east and have been living in Israel for millennia.

11. Which Gandhi are you talking about?

4. In Today's 'Apology,' Gideon Levy Just Doesn't Get It

One day after Ha'aretz's clarification, Gideon Levy himself publishes a column in which he apologizes for his earlier report in which he falsely claimed that the majority of Israeli Jews support apartheid in Israel. Not only is his apology incomplete, but it also reveals that he really has no clue why his original "apartheid" report generated such an outcry.

12. That's a good article, especially this part for those here....

...who agonize over the Palestinians they purport to care so much about:

But if Israel gets branded an apartheid state although Palestinian Arabs sit in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court, how should we classify Syria, where Palestinian refugees and their descendants are not allowed to vote or become citizens? Or Lebanon, where Palestinians cannot own property or work in numerous prestigious professions? If Israel practices apartheid towards its Palestinian Arab citizens, what should we call Saudi treatment of its Shia minority, who cannot serve as judges in ordinary courts? And what about migrants throughout the Gulf who are barred from citizenship on ethnic grounds?

I’m not saying that Yousef would condone any of this. But if he wants to use the word “apartheid” to describe the condition of Israel’s Palestinian Arabs—who enjoy rights denied to many ethnic and religious minorities throughout the Middle East and beyond—so many countries are going to quack that the term is going to lose any meaning. We should reserve “apartheid” for countries that deny an entire ethnic, racial or religious group the right to citizenship or the right to vote. Israel isn’t one of them.

7. Here's Gideon's apology

This article is meant to fix a few mistakes. They shouldn't have happened; we must acknowledge them, apologize for them and fix them. They were not made intentionally, but as a result of neglect due to time pressure. Now is the time to make things right.

13. yes it's time for that let's see what Gideon had to say you posted the first paragraph which is what

can accessed if you don't register it's free and simple name and email address are about what's required and one receives 10 articles for free, posting only the first paragraph which could be quite misleading on its own this snip starts from the second paragraph, which clarifies

The Dialog poll commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund, whose results were published in Haaretz last week, unearthed extremely serious and disturbing findings. It sketched a troubling portrait of a nationalistic and racist Israeli society. This isn't the first survey to demonstrate such a trend and, unfortunately, it won't be the last. The Hebrew headline of the news article describing the survey results ("Most Israelis support an apartheid regime in Israel" ) was misleading. Most Israelis do support apartheid, but only if the occupied territories are annexed; and most Israelis oppose such annexation. Haaretz explained this in a clarification published in the Hebrew edition on Sunday.

The article itself, which I wrote, did not contain any mistakes. It provided a precise and detailed description of the survey results. In my analysis of the survey, which appeared as a separate article, there was a single sentence that did not accurately represent the poll results and contradicted what I had written in the news piece a short time beforehand. My sin was to write: "The majority doesn't want Arabs to vote for the Knesset, Arab neighbors at home or Arab students at school."

The truth, as I wrote in the news piece, is different: "Just" 33 percent of the respondents said they don't want Arabs to vote in parliamentary elections, "just" 42 percent wouldn't want an Arab neighbor, and about the same proportion said it would bother them if there were an Arab student in their child's class. Not a majority - just a (large ) portion of Israelis espouse these frightening views. Cold comfort.

Imagine a similar survey in France: A third of the French don't want Jews to be eligible to vote and nearly half don't want a Jewish neighbor or a Jewish student in their child's class. The right-wing propagandists who are currently causing a ruckus about my mistake would be among the first to shout "anti-Semitism." But for us, the Jews, it's allowed.